1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a toner container that is detachably mountable onto an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a printer or a facsimile machine, and a method of determining the abnormalities of the toner container.
2. Description of the Related Art
Up to now, fine powder toner has been used as a developer in an image forming apparatus such as an electrostatic copying machine or a printer. In the case where the toner in the image forming apparatus main body has been completely consumed, the toner is supplied to the image forming apparatus main body with the use of a toner supplying container detachably mountable on the image forming apparatus main body.
When toner is supplied to a main body of the image forming apparatus, an agitating and feeding member within a toner supplying container is rotated by a driving force from the image forming apparatus main body to feed the toner, and the toner is discharged from an opening portion bit-by-bit and then supplied to the image forming apparatus main body.
The toner supplying container main body, the agitating and feeding member disposed within the toner supply container main body, and parts such as a gear which transmits a driving force to the toner supplying container main body an the agitating and feeding member have long lifetimes and are useable even if the toner within the container has been completely consumed. In recent years, the container from which the toner has been supplied and completely consumed is increasingly collected and recycled.
However, the conventional toner container suffers from the following drawbacks.
In the case where the toner supplying container is stored for a long period of time or vibrated during transportation, whereby air around the toner within the container escapes and the toner has a high density, the rotation torque of the agitating and feeding member goes up. In the worst case, the member may be deformed and damaged.
When recycling the above-described container, there is a fear that force exerted on the toner due to a sliding friction between the agitating member and the inner wall of the container will result in the toner being fused and bonded together into coarse-grained particles (coarse particles). Also, in the case of a toner supplying container that uses a flexible elastic member for the agitating and feeding member that feeds and discharges the toner, the sliding frictional force between the elastic member and the inner wall of the container is weakened and the remaining amount of toner increases.
Also, because the toner supplying container is tightly closed due to heat or ultrasonic welding after the parts have been assembled in the interior of the container and because it is difficult to separate the parts of the toner supplying container, particularly in the small toner supplying opening or the toner filling inlet of the toner supplying container, there arises a problem where it is very difficult to recognize the abnormalities of the interior of the container from which the toner has been supplied. This is a large factor that prevents the recycling of the container. For that reason, up to now, the container has been destroyed, the parts have been extracted from the container, and the dimensions, the configurations and the like have been recognized. Even then only the parts have been recycled. Thus, the recycling is not efficient.
The present invention has been made under the above-described circumstances, and therefore an object of the present invention is to provide a toner container which is capable of readily determining abnormalities of the agitating member, such as deformation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a determining method which is capable of readily determining an abnormality of the agitating member, such as deformation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a determining method which is capable of readily determining the abnormality of the agitating member such as deformation.
Still another object of the present invention will become apparent by reading the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying drawings.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent upon consideration of the following description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.